Ginger & Rosa - Filmhouse Cinema Edinburgh

4 New releases
HOLY MOTORS UNTOUCHABLE BARBARA
NEWRELEASE
Holy Motors
Showing until Thu18 Oct
Leos Carax • France/Germany 2012 • 1h56m • Digital projection
French, English and Chinese with English subtitles
18 – Contains strong nudity
Cast: Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Elise
Lhomeau.
French filmmaker Leos Carax (Les amants du Pont-Neuf,
Pola X) took Cannes by storm this year with this cyclone of
cinematic invention, receiving rapturous praise from critics
and audiences alike and making a dark-horse charge at the
Palme d’Or.
An intoxicating blend of science fiction, song and dance,
romance and carnival funhouse dada pranksterism, Holy
Motors is confounding and dazzling in equal measure,
earning comparisons to David Lynch, Lewis Carroll, Tron
and Metropolis. With vaudevillian genius (and the help of
elaborate costumes and makeup), French character actor
Denis Lavant inhabits no less than eleven roles as he is
driven about a digitally transformed fantasy Paris by his
chauffeur (the brilliant Edith Scob) in an odyssey that is
both espionage and performance, and overtly a metaphor
for our ever-changing online existences.
Gorgeously shot by Caroline Champetier, with an inspired
supporting cast including Kylie Minogue and Eva Mendes,
Holy Motors enchants with its stunning imagery, entertains
like a cyberpunk cabaret act, and provokes with its howl of
rage against our enslavement to technology.
NEWRELEASE
Untouchable Intouchables
Showing until Thu 18 Oct
Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano • France 2011 • 1h52m
Digital projection • French with English subtitles
15 – Contains strong language and soft drug use
Cast: François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot.
Move over Jean Dujardin and The Artist: France’s most
talked-about performance and film this year comes in
the shape of this fuse-lighting comedy that’s become the
country’s second-biggest box-office hit of all time with its
portrait of friendship across the racial and economic divide.
Paralysed from the neck down after an accident, gloomy
millionaire Philippe (François Cluzet) finds little in life worth
living for, until the arrival of his new assistant, Driss (Omar
Sy), a Senegalese rowdy from the downtrodden banlieues.
Not quite on doctor’s orders, Driss takes Philippe as far out
of his comfort zone as possible and into a world he never
knew existed – or rather always tried to avoid.
A slapstick, gleefully politically incorrect throwback to ’80s
culture-clash comedies like Trading Places, only played
out across contemporary France’s ever-palpable racial
and class tensions, Untouchable hit a nerve with French
audiences, critics hailing it as a cultural milestone.
NEWRELEASE
Barbara
Showing until Thu 11 Oct
Christian Petzold • Germany 2012 • 1h45m
Digital projection • German with English subtitles • cert tbc
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke.
In the paranoiac nightmare of East Germany, 1980,
Barbara, a physician from Berlin, has been sent to a small
country town as punishment for a crime against the state.
Tormented by the Stasi, she dreams of escape to the West
but finds herself being drawn inexorably, disastrously into
a relationship with a fellow doctor.
Subtly drawn and impeccably acted, Barbara is the assured
new offering from German master Christian Petzold, who
deservedly won the Best Director award at this year’s Berlin
Film Festival. A film of glancing moments and dangerous
secrets, Barbara paints a haunting picture of a young
woman being slowly crushed between the irreconcilable
needs of desire and survival.
After the 5.50pm screening on Monday 8 October there
will be an open discussion on the issues raised by the
film, led by a representative of the Humanist Society of
Scotland.
Humanism is an ethical stance which asserts that we
can lead good lives guided by compassion and reason,
rather than religion or superstition. Humanists are vitally
concerned with issues that affect our world.